In 1980, best-selling nonfiction writer Michael Lewis and his friend were almost arrested by Princeton, N.J. police for speeding in a golf cart. Driving down Washington Road in the middle of the night, Lewis and his friend aimed for the boat house, speeding so quickly that police cars couldn’t keep up — until they hit an uphill turn on Faculty Road. The two were caught by police officers and Public Safety and were assigned odd jobs on campus as punishment.

Nearly 30 years after his delinquency, Lewis, a former Wall Street trader, is the author of “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game.” Published in 2006, the work chronicles football player Michael Oher’s path to NFL fame and was adapted into the 2009 Oscar-winning film. Though his success in the literary world might suggest otherwise, Lewis’s career path reflects a commitment not to fame and fortune, but to pursuing his passion in life.

In his undergraduate years at Princeton U., Lewis had a lack of interest in his academic work and a penchant for having fun. “I applied myself to the pursuit of pleasure,” he said.

His long-time friend and former roommate Carter Roberts described Lewis’s life philosophy as, “Life is short, and you should do things that are fun and with people you like.”

A former art and archaeology major, Lewis described himself as an “indifferent” student for his first two-and-a-half years at the University. He joined Ivy Club in the spring of his sophomore year and defined his Princeton experience by the friends he made and the experiences he shared with them.

In his senior year, Lewis and his roommates — including Roberts, who now heads the World Wildlife Fund — lived in a suite above Blair Arch, which Lewis described as a “24-hour open bar.”

Roberts recalled Lewis as having an “impish quality.”

“He always gets this giddy sense of excitement when he’s about to tell you a story,” Roberts explained. “Like he’s about to tell you the dirtiest, most delicious story you’ve ever heard.”

Roberts noted that he and Lewis’s other friends were always unsure of what path Lewis would eventually pursue. “We were never quite sure what Michael was going to become,” he said.

But in his last year-and-a-half at the University, Lewis became a “serious student,” he said, discovering an interest in early Renaissance art and becoming “obsessed” with his thesis, titled “Donatello and the Antique.”

Art and archeology professor William Childs, who was Lewis’s thesis adviser, said that Lewis was a “fine student [who] worked hard, thought hard and listened hard.” But Childs advised Lewis against becoming an art historian after graduation.

“I was interested in the scholarship,” Lewis said, “but I didn’t have the scholarly disposition.”

But through the process of writing his senior thesis, Lewis, who had never written for any on-campus student publications, realized that his true passion was writing. He explained that he wanted to do what John McPhee, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, did on a daily basis.

“It’s like writing a senior thesis over and over again,” Lewis said. “Immersing yourself in something you’re passionate about and writing about it.”

As he became absorbed in his thesis, Lewis also enrolled in an introductory microeconomics course, taught by Wilson School professor Uwe Reinhardt, and discovered a passion for economics.

“The world was a conspiracy of people who understood this stuff [economics],” Lewis said. “I wanted to be part of the conspiracy rather than a victim of it.”

Lewis earned a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and worked on Wall Street and in London with Salomon Brothers. Lewis noted, however, that he found working on Wall Street difficult, given his lack of experience and knowledge.

Lewis explained that he was drawn to Wall Street for validation. “I didn’t want people to think I was a failure,” he said. “I wanted people to think I was doing well.”

He said that he believes the appeal of Wall Street is the same factor that leads students to Princeton. “It’s a tribute to the reluctance of [a] 21-year-old person, who’s got world by tail, to take risk[s] and control of their lives,” Lewis said. “The easiest way to gain validation in the world is Wall Street. It’s a sad thing, a total waste of talent.”

Lewis eventually realized that his true passion was writing. “I didn’t give a rat’s ass about Wall Street,” he said. Since his time at the University, Lewis had been submitting writing samples to magazines, and when he began writing his first book about Wall Street traders, he quit his Wall Street job to write full-time. The book, titled “Liar’s Poker,” was published in 1989 and was on The New York Times bestseller list for 62 weeks.

But Lewis’s undergraduate years did not foreshadow his success as a writer.

Lewis “wrote terribly,” Childs said, jokingly adding, “It’s probably why he makes millions writing now.”

“I would not describe Michael as the best writer or most disciplined writer in our room,” Roberts said, noting that Lewis’s success was a “tribute to what happens when you devote yourself to a certain craft.”

Speaking from his own experience pursuing his passions, Lewis said he hoped that current college students wouldn’t miss their chance by following a path to quick validation.

“If you don’t take risks with your lives now, it’s unlikely that you will,” Lewis said. “If you have a glimmer of passion, go try it. If you don’t, you’ll always regret it. My glimmer of passion was being a writer.”